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Tyanna Smith

Professor Morrow

EH 101/107

29 September 2017

My Unskilled Writing

In this autoethnography, I will discuss my think-aloud protocol translation through a

literacy narrative. The think-aloud protocol is self explanatory, it is a method of recording myself

talk through a video or audio, then going back to replay my recording to type everything I said in

that audio word for word. On a topic in my first year advising class on why I wanted to

become a nurse, and on my literacy narrative I did in EH 101 called California Raisins I used

my think-aloud protocol translation. A week before we were assigned this essay, we had to go

home and read some pages out of Writing About Writing. In this book, we read about a college

student named Alicir Santos Neto and his experience with the think-aloud protocol. Neto

explained that he wanted to know what were the characteristics in his writing process.

According to the Tug Of War article, Neto decided to record himself talking about the

process of constructing an essay in his dorm room, and when he was done recording he typed,

what he said in the recording word for word. After typing everything he said in his recording, he

then came up with an coding system. These codes were corresponding to what he was doing

while he was recording. For example; ( R) meant re-read the book, (T) texting, and ( W) writer's

block. After neto was done with coding he came to realize that during his process of writing an

essay he usually goes back and forth with talking english, and then portuguese to himself without

even realizing until he did the think-aloud protocol. So my professor assigned me and my
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classmates to do the same thing neto did, and write an autoethnography based on what weve

learned about our own composing process based on our think-aloud protocol.

Before, I started doing my recording, I knew I had to choose a good stable environment

to do my audio recording in. The library is cold and requires silence so that wasnt going to

work,and the student center can be quite busy. So I decided to record in my dorm because it

reminds me of home. My house is like somewhere safe without people constantly talking,

walking around, and looking at me. I had a few snacks I could get to whenever I felt myself

getting hungry. Also it was nice and chilly in my dorm room which is the type of temperature I

like to work in. I also had a computer desk, and computer chair in my dorm where I could get

comfortable to record and transcribe when I was finished. After choosing my location, I thought

it would be best for me choose a app called QuickTime that just records my voice and doesnt

video tape me talking. Me watching myself talk in a video wouldve been an issue. I tend to get a

bit nervous while looking at myself talk, and start looking down which stops me from talking

and lose focus on what I was saying. Also I knew having a good environment would change my

mind set on the whole assignment. At first when I heard from my professor say that the recording

had to be at least thirty minutes long, and it would take roughly about two hours to transcribe the

whole thing, I just thought the assignment was very time-consuming, and at the time, I didn't

have a lot of time to set aside for the audio. Knowing I had other class projects to do, and

knowing the free time I did have was going to work, I just thought I was never going to get it

done on time. When I was finally done with my recording, and it was time for me to transcribe, I

was shocked on how disorganized, and distracted I was during my whole audio recording

process.
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While coding my translation, I decided to code my text with colors rather than letters like

Neto used in his translation. So for everything that was highlighted in red meant I was distracted

in some type of way during my recording, which was most definitely the case. I for sure thought

I was in a good stable environment. I had my dorm room for a few hours to my lonesome, but as

I replayed my audio, I can hear one really loud noise in the background and me pausing during

the time I can hear it in my audio. I didn't realize that the movie that was playing at the time was

a huge distraction to me. Furthermore, there were many points in my recording where I could

hardly hear what I was saying because I was chewing and talking at the same time. I felt myself

reaching for a tiny snack once every ten minutes just because I knew they were there for me to

grab. Also doing my audio transcription, I could hear myself yawning a few times because of

how cold I had it in my dorm room. It never fails when Im in a classroom, or any type of

building that is 60 degrees, I get sleepy. When this happened, my mind set was on hurrying up

and finishing my audio so I could take a nap rather than really going into details in my audio.

Also, I felt myself trying to talk into the record while texting, and snapchatting friends back. I

caught myself saying the phrase umm I knew for a fact every time I said that I was on my

phone instead of focusing on my task.

As I reflected, I found a solution that would block out my distractions during my writing

process. I need to work in a very quiet environment, which to me is the library. Even though my

dorm room is very quiet, there are a lot of items that can get me off track for instance; my TV,

phone, iPad and microwave. With the knowledge of having my phone and iPad in the library is

similar to having it in my dorm room. I just believe as I see other students not on there phone or

Ipad would motivate me to stay off mine. My mind tends to go blank after a hour of writing, so I

know to bring a few snacks when this happen and stretch it out at the library, also bringing a few
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snacks to the library would have me eating less snacks which equals less distractions. I know for

a fact that I get easily distracted while all those items are around so if I had all those items gone

or put away I could plan more on what I'm going to write about.

Moving on, pre planning has never been my favorite thing to do. For the transcribe I

planned on what I wanted to read out loud a couple days before, but that rarely ever happens. So,

for everything I highlighted in paper that was the color light blue meaning that I already planned

that out, which are big chunks in the beginning of my paper, and the end of my paper was

highlighted light blue. Planning for this assignment gave me a different outlook on pre planning

for my next assignment I receive. I usually just start writing and go back and change what I need

to do in my intro paragraph. By me going back rereading and adding to my intro paragraph, I get

my bright ideas on what to write for the entire paper. I'm not a fan of sitting down, and planning

on what I need to read for the intro and each paragraph after that. I was forced to do so in high

school for a grade and always felt frustrated with having to plan something I already knew what I

wanted to write about. Since I already pre planned on what I was going to record for my

transcribe it was quite easy.

Another solution that came mind was that it's not a terrible idea to start pre planning for

assignments that are lengthy I knew I usually get stuck on assignments that longer than three

pages. So having something to go back and look at while I'm stuck on what to write would help

me finish my papers at a faster rate. I have a job, so when I have a paper that's getting close to

the due date, and I'm in that state of not knowing what to write planning would help me from

calling out of work because I wouldn't feel like I don't have enough time to finish. Also, if I start

planning it will help me stay more organized with what I'm writing about. Sometimes I have

sentences that would go perfect with one paragraph on a totally different paragraph that would
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have readers confused on why I added that sentence in there. During my literacy narrative,

Professor Morrow commented that I needed to be reorganized a few of sentences to make it more

clearer which could be avoiding if I planned on what I was going to write about in the first place,

and just not free write thinking it sounds right when in reality it doesn't. So for my next

assignment, I'm going to plan everything out before I write an see if it's a big difference and how

much rereading,editing, and revision I have to do when I'm done. Hopefully, after my next

assignment I won't have so much feedback from professor Morrow on what I needed to change

in my future essay.

Also, most of my coding was in hot pink, and a light brown, hot pink means commenting,

and light brown means interpreting. During my recording, I was interpreting what Ms. Morrow

commented for me to change in my literacy narrative. She commented give this paragraph a bit

more development, Reorganize this sentence so that's its a little bit clearer in communicating

what are you trying to say here, and For your revisions, I made a number of formatting and

editing suggestions. Try to work on cleaning up your sentence structure to

change in my literacy narrative. So I had to interpret on her feedback which I did towards the

middle to the end of my recording. I was explaining on why I wrote some sentences, and how I

can make them more clearer by adding transition words. Also I was commenting on how I'm

going to change some sentences, commas, and common words around for example; my, like,

and, and an. During her feedback, she put a few times that I needed to change my you

language to I because it was a literacy narrative about myself. So indeed I informed her at the

time of going back and re reading and trying to go back and make last minute edits that I felt

myself rushing because I was trying to head over to our first home football game. If I hadn't

rushed myself I couldve fixed those easy mistake that wouldn't have taken no time at all to do.
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She also wanted to know more details about certain topics in my essay which I went over in my

recording of what I was going to revise in my paper.

One other highlighted part of my essay was the color yellow. Yellow means that I just

thought of it and just added to my recording. Yellow is towards the end of my paper when I

started to run out of thing to say, and I know my time wasn't quite at thirty minutes yet. So I go

back to a topic at the beginning of my story like I always do and think of more details to add to

the beginning but try to connect it towards the end so it would make sense to a reader other than

myself. So for the recording after I got done interpreting on all Ms. Morrow comments, I went

back to the topic of what I wanted to become a nurse and on the top of my head I thought of

more stuff that I thought was interesting on why people like myself wanted to become a nurse. I

tend to go back to paragraphs that I few don't have enough information and fill in more. I would

rather have too much information then rather not enough information.

Furthermore, I've learned that by me doing this think-aloud protocol that Ive found new

ways for me to change myself from being an unskilled to a skilled writer. I thought that because

my dorm felt like home that it would be a better environment; unfortunately, that wasnt the case.

To now going from not pre planning at all to pre planning a little bit for this paper, now that has

influenced me to start pre planning on what I need to get done for all my classes on a day by day

basis. I thought I wouldn't be able to find something that affected the way I did this paper the

same way Neto found that talking in two different languages affected the way he did his research

because he would talk to himself in those two different languages that would throw him off

focus. Also this audio translation has helped me come up with better ways of how to revise my

literacy narrative to make my essay is more clearer, and to get my grade brought up to an A.

Reference:
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Alcir Santos Neto. Tug of War. Writing About Writing. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs.

Bedford/St. Martins, 2016, pg.774-786